T-Minus 9 Months and Counting
by ReidsFanGirl18
Summary: A Sequel to "You Have that Effect on Me"- Nearly a year has passed since Spencer and Maeve's wedding... now yet another life changing journey is about to begin for the young couple, that of parenthood... (Reviews are much appreciated)
1. Chapter 1: The Blue Line

A total of three years had passed since Spencer first contacted Maeve, over two years had passed since they first laid eyes on each other face to face. Since then they had each abandoned their tiny apartments and moved together into a small three bedroom house, and they'd been married for almost a year now. The wedding had been relatively small, including only their close extended families and friends.

Spencer was currently on an away case, expecting to come home sometime the next day, meanwhile Maeve was home alone, in the master bathroom, staring into the white porcelain sink bowl at a small blue line, the meaning of which, without a doubt, was about to change their lives forever. She tapped her fingers rhythmically on the cool, gray, white, and black, speckled granite countertop as she wondered how she possibly could have not realized it earlier. She'd been nauseous off and on for nearly two weeks by now, she'd chalked it up to leftovers gone bad and weird takeout food, still she'd decided to test herself anyway and sure enough… she was pregnant…

They hadn't really been trying so much as they had stopped trying not to… She now had to find a way to tell Spencer the news, that they were going to be parents roughly eight to nine months from now… This was a topic they'd discussed on their honeymoon ten months earlier and, as it was with so many things, their views were essentially the same. They would welcome parenthood if or when it came but it wasn't a huge priority on their shared to-do list. Even though it was bound to eat at her not to tell him immediately, she'd have to wait until he got home, this was not something you told your husband over the phone.

She tried to picture how he'd react, she could see it in her mind, surprise, elation, nervousness, excitement, then more nervousness… a flow of emotion run across his face. Maeve could see it in her mind as clearly as if it were happening, as if he was already standing right there in front of her. She knew that once this played out, for the next nine months she'd witness a tug of war play out just below the surface. When they'd decided to take the path of wait and see, his vote not to try aggressively, as some couples did, had not been based solely of desire. He would want this child, even more than she did. But two aspects of his personality had kept him from expressing aloud, what she'd seen written all over his face that night. His own father had abandoned him when he was nine and never spoken to or contacted him until Spencer had sought him out himself, almost eighteen years later, what kind of father would he be, having had such a terrible example? Maeve knew the answer to that… a great one… and somewhere deep within him, he would know it too.

So how would she tell him? That was the question…


	2. Chapter 2: Telling Him

When Reid came home the next night, he came home to find an infant sized, candy corn Halloween costume, draped over his brown leather armchair. He registered that it was out of the ordinary, but having been exhausted far beyond the point of curiosity, he simply dropped his go-bag at the side of the chair and went upstairs looking for Maeve.

"Maeve! I'm home…" he called out. He knew she was too, her car had been in the driveway. Yet the house was quiet, the TV wasn't tuned to a scientific documentary, the radio was silent, there were no footsteps coming from the second floor. "Maeve? Where are you?" he asked.

"Up here!" he heard her call out from the master bedroom.

He only saw her for a split second before he felt her wrap her arms around him.

"Welcome home," she said.

"Thanks" he replied. He could tell that something had changed. There was something different in her affect, the look in her eye… something was up… yet jet lag kept him from deciphering exactly what. Contrary to what most people might believe…he was utterly awful at reading people…the natural ability for which, was almost completely lost on him. It was only his quick mind and vast knowledge of psychology and sociology that served to counteract this; and right now he just didn't have the energy to filter her unusual behavior through his computer-like brain.

"How was New Mexico…?"

"We managed to save eight victims…" he told her. He had no desire to go into what the Unsub had done to the other twelve victims that they hadn't managed to save, that was something that actually made him wish he _didn't _have an eidetic memory.

"Good" she said, acutely aware that he didn't want to go into too much detail about this one, the look of sheer exhaustion clearly written all over his face told her that.

"What about you? Did anything interesting happen around here while I was gone?"

It was her first chance to tell him, but she hesitated. It was almost midnight now, and he seemed so tired. When it came down to it, so was she…

"Maeve…" He said. "I know there's something, there has to be. I can't explain it but you're holding something back. What is it?"

"Well…Spencer…"

"Maeve…?"

"We can talk about it in the morning…" She said.

"Maeve, are you sure?"

"Yeah…it can wait. We're both tired, let's get some sleep…"

"Ok…" he replied in agreement.

_In his dream that night, Spencer was back in New Mexico. The Unsub had another victim, a girl…two years old just like the others. He didn't understand how he knew that, he simply knew. He had to get her out. He just had to. _

_He and the team infiltrated the secondary location, which looked exactly like the real one. Just like in the actual case, they found the Unsub holding the child crudely with a razor blade to her neck. Only this child wasn't one of the actual victims. She had hair just like his, and her eyes were a bluish green…they…they were Maeve's… _

_"Daddy!" the little girl cried. "Daddy! Daddy help me!" _

_Daddy? Why was she calling him Daddy? It didn't make any sense…he didn't have kids… Yet there was something about her…he knew, the same way he knew that she was down there in the first place, that she was his daughter. He shot the Unsub through the head and caught the little girl in his arms as her captor's arms gave out. It tortured him to listen to her crying, to see the fear in her eyes, which were the spitting image of Maeve's. _

_"It's ok…it's ok Sweetie…" he said, rocking her gently as she clinged to him with her face buried against his shoulder. _

_"Daddy…" _

_"It's alright, you're safe now… It's ok, I'm here…you're ok, Daddy's here, Daddy's got you…"_

Spencer woke up the next morning with Maeve in his arms. His eyes shot open as he lifted his head to look around the room. Everything seemed normal, the same light brown walls with white trim… the same dark oak dresser with a mirror framed to match against the wall next to the door. It was bright, even without the light on, bright, and warm, and safe. He wasn't in a dark basement facing down a pedophile… he was home, in his own house, with the love of his life still asleep in his arms. He looked over at the clock on the bedside table…it was already eight-thirty. Thank goodness Hotch had given everyone a day off for once or he'd be late already. But he wasn't late, and for right now he was perfectly content to stay right where he was.

Suddenly Maeve stirred, she snuggled against him and opened her eyes.

"Morning…" he said.

"Good morning Honey…" she replied, smiling back at him.

"So…now are you going to tell me what's going on…? He asked, giving her a pleading look.

"What do you think is going on?" she asked, sitting up on her knees on the bed.

"My guess is it must have something to do with the miniature Halloween costume downstairs…"

"Correct…we might be needing that-"

"For who? We don't know any kids that will fit into it… it's _way _too small for Henry and Jack…"

"No…not for them…not even this year…we'll need it for next year…" She explained. She was beaming now.

"I'm not following…"

"I wanna show you something…get up…"

He did…

She grabbed his arm and he allowed her to lead him into the bathroom; where the positive pregnancy test was still sitting in the bottom of the sink bowl.

"What…? This…this is you…?" he asked, his tone and expression was pure shock.

"Yeah, that's me, it's us! We're gonna be parents Spencer!" She exclaimed happily, hugging him tightly. There it was, the very flow of emotion she'd anticipated in her head, was dancing across his face… she waited, watching intently to see which reaction won out as dominant until after the longest thirty seconds of her life, his expression settled on joy.

"Wow…just wow…"


	3. Chapter 3: The Planning Begins

"I was surprised too…"

"H-how long have you known?" Spencer asked nervously.

"I just found out for sure the day before yesterday…I didn't want to tell you over the phone…I wanted to wait until you were here with me…"

He smiled.

"You know what this means right? We should start making plans to turn one of the spare bedrooms into a nursery…and there's something else you and I need to talk about…" She said, but Spencer wasn't listening anymore.

He was too busy stalking around the house like a whirlwind, reading the ingredients on the packaging of just about every household chemical, cleaner, and medication they owned, if it contained anything that could hurt Maeve or the baby before or after he or she was born, he threw it into a black garbage bag. When he was done, there wasn't much left in terms of cleaning supplies.

"What…are you doing?" She asked.

"I'm gathering up all the teratogens and getting them out of this house…"

"OK, did you hear what I said earlier…?"

"Which part? That we needed to start planning things out or that there's something else you want to discuss?"

"Either…both…apparently you did hear both… We need to deal with the second part first…"

Sensing that it was something important, he stopped what he was doing and turned to face her.

"What is it…?"

"Actually it has to do with what you're doing right now… I can't be in my lab… not until the baby comes, probably not even while I'm nursing… there's literally at least a hundred different substances in there that could cause anything from congenital heart defects to missing organs to immune deficiency to limb hypoplasia and after birth could put them at risk for developmental problems… I can't be in there… So we have to decide where I _will _be for the next probably at least two years…"

"As in…?"

"As in do I just take extended maternity leave as of now? Or do I keep working, just in a different capacity? I could work down in the hospital or I could teach the non-lab genetics and biology classes as a professor…or maybe even both…but we have to decide before Monday so I can tell my department head before I'm expected in the lab…"

"What do you want to do?" He asked her.

"Honestly, if I'm stuck at home for eight to nine months I think I'll lose it… So think I'll work in the hospital until the semester ends in a month, then I'll teach the next two terms and still be available to the hospital when they need me…"

"That sounds like a plan to me…I just have one question…"

"Which would be…?"

"Are you sure there aren't any teratogens in the hospital?" He said, in that serious and yet subdued tone of his that usually signaled worry.

"Well I wouldn't say none… but not the kind that can be harmful just by incidental exposure…it'll be fine…"

"Are you sure…?" he asked.

"Yes."

"You're absolutely certain…?"

"Yes, Spencer…what are you going to do…follow me around puppy guarding me for nine months?"

"No…" he replied, but by the way he said it she could tell that in all honesty he didn't actually think that was such a bad idea. This was going to be a long nine months.

By the end of the day, he had just about the whole place childproofed to the point where it was about as safe as a much cleaner version of the bouncy play-lands that were sometimes found inside fast food restaurants. Soft covers were on every single sharp edged table and counter in the house, all unused outlets had little, plastic covers on them, and he'd wrapped thick layers of soft foam around chair and table legs and tied it in place with twine.

"You do know that we have about eight and a half months to get all that done right?"

"Why wait? With my work schedule I need to start getting this stuff done while we have the time. Speaking of which…how do we want to do the nursery? Do we do it neutral and wait until he/she is born? Or do we find out beforehand if it's a boy or a girl and decorate accordingly?"

"Well considering that short of a DNA test we can't know for at least another couple of months…"

He eyed her with a pleading look.

"Ok, we can start picking out the basic furniture this weekend, we'll find out at the four month mark and then we can finish decorating…" she told him.

"Alright…" he said, then he took a tape-measure out of the garage and set about measuring the spare room nearest to where he and Maeve slept. Then, on a few sheets of graph paper he drew out maps of several different possible layouts of how much space they could afford to let a given item take up and where to place it. Once he was satisfied that he'd chosen their most sensible option, he put it up on the fridge where either of them could find it easily.


	4. Chapter 4: The Ultimate AnswerDog

Four weeks later, Spencer and Maeve had a crib, dresser, rocking chair, play pen, and changing table picked out. All of them were a basic, dark oak which could be suited to a boy or a girl based on the design of the padding and other items which were to be added later. As of yet, it all remained in boxes sitting roughly where the items would eventually be set up; because for all his knowledge in other areas, Spencer was useless with tools and therefore had no idea how to assemble any of it.

Still there was something else new around the Reid residence… a pair of matching dog bowls, a dog bed, a crate of dog toys, a spray bottle, a bag of dog food, a leash… a collar-activated doggie door leading out to a yard enclosed by recently-installed invisible boundary fence…all of which belonged to a seven week old redbone coonhound puppy which they had chosen but had yet to bring home.

Spencer wasn't exactly known for being particularly good with animals or children, soon he would have one of each. Getting the dog had been a joint decision. It was bothering him more and more to leave Maeve alone for days at a time when he was on an away case. Most such cases victimized women and children and lately it had become increasingly difficult not to see his own beloved wife and his own unborn child as the bodies from the crime scene photos. At the same time, Maeve wanted something warm and alive… something she could cuddle with on the nights that he was gone. So they decided to get a dog… the question was what kind of dog.

Neither one of them knew much about training or living with one, but Spencer's grandparents had once bred redbone coonhounds and trained the pups for everything from hunting to guarding to search and rescue… Nana Penny still did have a few, though she rarely actually bred them anymore. He had called her up (much to her delight) and sure enough, for once there was a recent little of pups. She was keeping two of them but trying to find homes for the rest. He hadn't told her why the very animals that had been one of the most annoying things about his childhood were suddenly his best friends, why he suddenly wanted one, but as always, Nana had picked it out of him.

He'd gotten her answering machine at first, guessed she was at the store or something and thought he'd leave her a message, but she'd picked up the phone while he was leaving that message.

One Week Earlier:

Spencer hated calling his grandmother, at least, when there wasn't anything expressly wrong; because although he loved her dearly, more than almost anyone else in the world…these conversations usually included her guilt-tripping him about not visiting her more often. The worst part about that was the simple fact that she was absolutely right. He'd gone up there, to his mother's hometown, where Nana still lived on nearly two acres of land in an old farmhouse that was ridiculously oversized for just one little old lady…just once in the nearly eleven years since he'd started his career with the Bureau…and that was almost two years ago now. What kind of grandson was he?

The phone rang once, twice, three…four times… before it finally went to her voicemail.

"This is Penny, I'm not here right now. You know what to do when this newfangled contraption makes that beeping sound…"

"Hi Nana…It's Spencer…" he began, but then the real Penny Langston picked up the phone, not a voice recording or an automated message but the real, living, breathing force of nature that was his loving, doting neurotic harebrained grandmother.

"Well hello stranger…if it isn't the grandson who never comes to visit me…"

"Nana I'm pretty sure I'm not your only grandson…" he said, trying to keep a guilty half-smile off his face even though he knew there was no way she could see him now.

"Right as usual, but you know what? Not a one of ya ever comes up here to see me…I just thought that if somebody was going to… it would be you more likely than Timothy, or the twins…but you don't…not unless I organize a family reunion and even then we have to all but kidnap you…"

"Nana, I'm sorry…I really am…tell you what, I'll come visit… but I actually called because I need to ask you for something, something that I'd really rather not ask anyone else…"

"Oh honey, whatever it is, you know better than that. You don't have to strike any deals with me. Whatever you need is yours whether I get anything in return or not. Do you know why?"

"Because I'm your grandson and in your mind that's what a grandmother does?"

"No…because it doesn't matter that you're grown up, or how long you stay away… you're still my little boy…that's all there is to it. So what is it?"

"Well I was wondering if you'd had any hound puppies recently…"

"As a matter of fact… Diamond…that's the great-great-granddaughter of the one that was your grandfather's favorite…had a little of pups born about six weeks ago…"

"Did you find homes for all of them yet…?"

"Just the two I'm keeping, and they aren't going anywhere…why? You know somebody who might be interested in helping me out with that?"

"Um yeah…me…Maeve and I, we'd like one…"

"You? My grandson? Spencer Reid? The guy who spent the first fourteen years of his life scared to death of those dogs? Now you're saying you want one? What's going on Honey? There's something. I know you…"

"Well you know I'm gone a lot with work and sometimes I think it wouldn't be a bad idea if Maeve wasn't completely alone here…"

"Why'd it take somebody as smart at you a whole ten months to figure that out? Unless… unless… Oh…I'm about to be a great-Grandma… aren't I?"

"Yes, Nana you are…"

"Oooohhh I can't wait! Of course you can have one…come up here some weekend, you get the pick of the litter!"

"That's really nice of you Nana, just one problem with that. Neither of us know how to recognize what we're looking for…"

"Lucky for you, I do… let's see…I know you probably want a dog capable of protecting her, but smart too so they won't just bark at any old thing at two or three in the morning… and she probably wants one who will lay by her when you're not around some rainy night… I know just the one…a little female I've already named Peanut…she's yours once she and her siblings can leave their mother…"

"Thank you…"

"Again…all you had to do was ask…I'm just going to ask for one little thing…"

"What's that…?"

"Am I allowed to come down there to meet the next generation when the time comes?"

"Of course…"

"Thank you Dear…"

"Anything for you…"


	5. Chapter 5: Inter-Team Profiling

By the time Maeve was three months pregnant, Reid had been acting slightly off for a while and this had not gone unnoticed by the rest of the BAU. In fact, Morgan had been picking at him trying to find out what was going on.

Spencer hadn't wanted to tell him, they didn't want to tell anyone until their baby was out of the danger zone, most miscarriages happened in the first trimester and if that had happened, the others being devastated with them would have just made it worse.

So far he hadn't said a word, although they were officially, technically in the clear…that and Morgan was getting to be just that annoying, he couldn't hold out that much longer.

In the middle of the afternoon on a cold day in December, he and Morgan were checking the location where a local rapist apparently liked to end his encounters with local call girls by replacing his own involvement with that of a gun. It was an alley off of K-street so finding a hotbed of prostitution was far from unusual… it was a cold but bright day out but the tall, brick buildings on either side kept the alley itself in shadow and probably fifteen of twenty degrees colder than the five-below that it was in the sun.

"Come on Kid, I know there's something… you been actin all weird and jumpy for months…and don't say you thought I knew by now that you're always like that, this is different…so what's up?"

"Morgan, you've asked me that same question a total of sixty-four times in the last month…sixty-eight point six times, if we count the times either I or a case cut you off…"

So then just tell me what's up for crying out loud…because you know I'm just gonna keep pestering the hell out of you until I get an answer…"

"What do you think is going on Morgan? What do you think you've seen?" He asked, partly because he hoped this would get Morgan to back off and also to get a read on just how close he really was to guessing what was going on.

"Well, you never wanna hang out after work anymore…and don't explain that away on being married because it's just been the last two months, not the last ten…for the last ten it's been less, for the last two you've turned it down every single time… Secondly like I said, you've been way more jumpy than usual even for you…"

"So I want to spend more time with my wife…that proves anything…how? If you want to hang out we can hang out…"

"Ok, why do you act like a detective chasing a cop killer every time lately we get a case involving women or kids? You never used to get that far into it before, not like this, not this often…lately it's _every _case…?"

"I'll tell you…"

"Finally…" he said, exasperated.

"But not yet…"

"Reid…you're killing me here…"

"You'll all know soon enough…by the way there's a shell casing behind you… it's a twenty-two so it could be our Unsub…"

Morgan turned around and picked it up off of the blacktop.

"I didn't even see this…"

"Maybe you should be helping me profile this rapist instead of profiling me…" he said.

"Point taken, let's get this to ballistics and see if we can match it to our Unsub…" Morgan replied, and the two of them headed back to the car.


	6. Chapter 6: The Anniversary

A few days later Reid and Maeve spent their anniversary at home, together on the couch next to a roaring fire in the living room fireplace, with takeout food from their favorite restaurant and a bottle of sparkling non-alcoholic wine… it was essentially fizzy grape juice but it tasted better than the real thing… it was nice just to be home…to be together, to have a romantic evening not turn into a rain check delivered by a phone call and a flower delivery carrying an apology card.

They were snuggled together on the couch next to the fireplace. It was almost surreal, that here he was, celebrating a full year since he and Maeve had married, and now he knew that she wasn't the only one snuggled in his arms.

"This is nice…"

"Yeah, it's good to be home…and we cracked that local case…"

"I know…I read the paper. I knew you would…"

"Say, I wanted to talk to you about something…"

"Ok…?"

"When do you think we should tell the others?" He asked.

"You mean they don't already know? You spend all day with five other profilers and an extremely curious and computer-savvy force of nature named Penelope Garcia, and you're really not all that hard to read. I wasn't exactly expecting to be able to keep it a secret all that long…"

"Oh they definitely know that there's _something _going on…I think Hotch and Rossi might have an idea, and Morgan is on the right track… but so far no one knows anything for certain. You know what their next question will be once they actually find out…"

"Yes, and even we don't know the answer to that yet… although I did schedule the test that will tell us… it's happening three weeks from tomorrow…"

"Is that something I need to try to be here for…?"

"Not really, the baby's still too young for that type of thing to be visible by ultrasound…and a karyotype isn't much of a spectator sport… I was going to have one done anyway just because, well…look at our track record…since when has _anything _gone our way without something going wrong?"

"Never…" he replied, it was true, from the very beginning it seemed that although everything had always turned out alright in the end, it seemed that everything that could have possibly gone wrong along the way, had.

"Exactly, and a karyotype won't pick up on everything but it will pick up on big chromosomal problems if there are any and it will also tell us much more definitively whether we have a son or a daughter. It doesn't get much more concrete than DNA. All the actual test involves is extracting a small amount of fluid from the amniotic sack, there will be stray fetal cells floating in it and then another geneticist will put the chromosomes in pairs, put the pairs in order, and then analyze them for abnormalities in number or structure… After the fluid extraction the rest of it will be carried out in a lab so no you don't need to be there. I'd like it if you were but you're not going to end up sleeping in Peanut's doghouse if you get called away on a case and can't make this one."

"Ok, things have been kind of quiet compared to how it usually is for us but I have a feeling that's not going to last much longer. I have some time coming but I was actually planning on saving it for when the baby actually comes." He said.

He hadn't explained his planned use of the rest of the vacation time he had coming to anyone, not Hotch, not even Maeve… it had been a rough couple of years so he was amazed he still had enough left for what he intended to do with it. Between the month solid he'd taken for the wedding and honeymoon, then the family reunion before that, and his own brush with death at the hands of pneumonic plague smack in-between and of course his minimum of two two-week visits every year to his mother…. Yep…the fact that he still had another two-months coming was nothing short of a miracle.

"You're going to stick around here and help me afterwards?" Maeve asked, sounding almost as surprised as she was elated.

"Well yeah…this is our baby…and I wanna be here when we bring him or her home, I want to be around as much as I can and I'm planning it out so I can be…"

"I just have one question…" Maeve asked.

"What's that?" he asked.

"How on Earth did I get so lucky?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well usually all the guy cares about is putting food on the table… they don't want any ridiculously late or early wake up calls and resist helping with any of the dirty work…basically they try to put as much of that on the mother or baby-sitter as they possibly can until the child is old enough to start playing with you…"

"That…is just…not right…"

"And that…is one of the ten-thousand things I love about you…Happy Anniversary Spencer…"

"Happy Anniversary to both of us…" he said, reaching up for a kiss...

Three weeks later…

Maeve's best friend, Dr. Megan Hunt, was a neurologist first and foremost but in the past year she had added a masters in human genetics, and had taken over most of the laboratory portion of her friend's job while Maeve could not be in the lab. Earlier that morning she had helped to extract a sample of the amniotic fluid Maeve's baby was living in.

Now she was in the lab, with her shoulder-length red hair pulled back into a braid so that it wouldn't get in her way. She was looking at the chromosomes from one of the fetal cells extracted with the fluid sample under an electron microscope and putting them in order.

At first glance everything looked normal, she was able to put a complete set in order with everything accounted for. Nothing missing, not a gene out of place… but once she had done that she realized there were extras where they shouldn't exist…a lot of extras… a baby with this many extra chromosomes shouldn't have survived this far into pregnancy…

_What the hell is all this? _Megan asked herself. She checked, there was only one amniotic sack, one placenta, and according to the ultrasound scans from almost a month prior… one baby… But then again ultrasounds were known for _still _giving false negatives for any number of things.

She looked at the slide in front of her again…then she started to organize the extras into a separate karyotype and that's when she realized what she was looking at. It was so rare, that to see it here before her in real life, felt like getting the wind knocked out of her. She took several slow steps back, the only sounds in the room were the hum of the equipment, her own heavy breathing, and the squeak of her flats on the linoleum floor. Then she ran from the lab downstairs to her office in the hospital and grabbed her cellphone. She needed to talk to both of them, immediately.


	7. Chapter 7: The Genetic Lottery

When Spencer and Maeve came in to Megan's office that Saturday afternoon, a half hour after getting the call, they were worried and bewildered. What was so important that they had to know it right then? They were sure there was some kind of abnormality because if there wasn't she would've divulged the results over the phone instead of having them come in. The couple couldn't help but give their friend sheepish, pleading _please tell us everything's ok _looks.

"Hi guys, both of you please have a seat." Megan responded, gesturing toward the off-white all too-modern sofa against the large set of windows that took up almost the entire wall and looked out over the rest of the campus.

They obeyed.

"Megan, what is this about? What is it that you couldn't tell us over the phone…?" Maeve asked, her voice almost frantic. She tried to read Megan's expression but it was mixed.

"As you know, I finished analyzing the karyotype…" Megan began.

"And…?" Reid cut in. "What did it show? Is there something wrong with our baby?" he asked, fearing that one of those moments every parent dreads was in their imminent future. A moment when everything they had imagined, dreamed of, and looked forward to for the last four months, would all come crashing down and blow up in their faces.

"I brought you both in here instead of just calling you because if we didn't have this conversation in person you might not believe me…" The older woman said.

"What do you mean?"

"It's one of the rarest chromosomal combinations known to man… this is the first time I've seen it for myself, though I did read about it once in medical school…"

"Megan please…get to the point." Maeve demanded, as though she were being tortured.

"There is not one baby…there are two…a male/female pair of mono-zygotic twins."

"Wait a second…how is that even possible?" Reid asked. "Mono-zygotic twins are genetically identical…"

"Yes, and these two are right down to the fact that one of them is a boy and one of them is a girl. Other than that they are identical…"

"W-wow…" Maeve exclaimed. Being a geneticist herself she knew already what Megan was about to explain.

"Male/female identical twins are only born when something we call double-nondisjunction occurs on chromosome twenty-three, the XX or XY pairing, an egg which mistakenly contains two X chromosomes instead of just one is fertilized by a sperm that contains an X and a Y instead of one or the other… normally someone with two full sets of _any _chromosome isn't going to survive very long…but sometimes the embryo splits, creating a pair of twins…who end up saving each other's lives by existing. This is rare obviously… what is even rarer is the way in which they split… most of the time when this happens they end up with the girl having Turner's syndrome and the boy having Klinefelter…but your embryo split in such a way as to create a healthy, chromosomally normal pair. You guys just dodged a gigantic bullet… Remind me to take you two gambling sometime because you basically won the genetic lottery…"

"So…they…they're ok…?" Spencer asked, he was in emotional overload but right now the health of his child-children, was all he cared about.

"Yes, in fact had they both been one or the other instead of one of each, I probably wouldn't have even noticed…other than this the karyotype came out perfectly…no missing or transplanted sections, no other instances of nondisjunction…they are fine as far as the karyotype is concerned. A karyotype doesn't pick up everything, it's really more for the big-picture kind of stuff, and given what we know already happened, and just how rarely these things self-correct like that…I'm going to suggest that it might not be a bad idea to get a full DNA profile of the twins after they're born to look for single gene mutations that may have gone unnoticed…"

"Why can't we just do this now?" Maeve asked.

"No!" both Megan and Spencer replied in unison.

"Doing a karyotype once won't do much harm…but a second extraction could do real damage… at this stage it's going to be far safer to wait and swab them for DNA non-invasively as newborns than to stick another big needle in your abdomen…" Megan told her.

"She's right Maeve…"


	8. Chapter 8: Cat's Out of the Bag

Two weeks later, they had successfully doubled all the baby furniture and they'd also put a couple of bassinets in their room so that they could be close to the twins for the first few weeks at least.

Finally they decided that it was time to tell the others, at last, what was going on. So one night, Reid got everyone to stick around for a little while. It only took Maeve about ten minutes to arrive at the BAU after the actual work for the day ended.

"I know you guys have been wondering why I've been kind of weird lately…."

"That's only what we've been asking you for the last almost five months!"

"I know guys and I'm sorry…"

"So you're finally gonna tell us what's up?" Morgan asked, getting way more satisfaction than the others because his nagging was finally going to come of something.

"Do you guys notice anything different?" Maeve asked in response, she was showing fairly obviously now.

"Hm…" they were analyzing her intently, even though the answer was right in front of them.

"Guys…come on! It's not that hard to see." She said.

"What is it?"

"I'm pregnant…"

"Oh my God…you guys…Congratulations!" JJ exclaimed, hugging them both.

Rossi and Hotch just stood their grinning from ear to ear, they weren't at all surprised.

Meanwhile Garcia was spazzing out, happily squealing and jumping for joy, then she hugged them too.

"Any idea what you're having?" JJ asked.

"Actually we just recently got the answer to that…" Reid replied

"So which is it?" Rossi asked.

"Both, or rather…one of each, we're having twins…"

The team's eyes grew wider, their smiles bigger. This was better than anyone had imagined the truth could be.

"Why keep good news like that on the DL? This is amazing!" Garcia asked.

"Sorry we kept it from you this long but we wanted to wait until we knew what exactly we were having…we didn't know there were twins until two weeks ago. Otherwise we might have said something sooner…"

"So is that…why you of all people got a dog recently?" Hotch asked. He was more familiar than most to the usual discordant reaction between Reid and animals.

"How did you know that?"

"There's been little red dog hairs on your clothes for the last few months… I'm guessing a shorthaired breed, maybe a hound of some kind. Most likely a puppy if it's still small enough to climb all over you…"

"You're right, a four and a half month old female redbone coonhound puppy… named Peanut…"

"Oh! She sounds darling!" Garcia, who was more of an animal lover than any of them and could just imagine Reid sitting in his chair with a small dog snuggled in next to his leg, being stroked gently by her master as he sat there reading a book.

"I have to admit, she is pretty cute…" Reid said.

"She's a handful though, kind of like a practice run…"

"When are you due Maeve?" JJ asked.

"In July, probably around July thirtieth. That's the actual due date anyway…"

"Well Reid, if it happens while you're here just tell me… I'll order you to go…" Hotch told him…


	9. Chapter 9: The Nursery

The rest of February came and went, along with March, April, and then in May, Garcia decided to throw Maeve a baby-shower.

"Come on Maeve! Register SOMEWHERE! Give me an idea what to get you for the twins." Garcia begged, when they were having a girls' night. They were on a darkened street outside a wall of shops as far as the eye could see.

"We have the essentials…"

"Essentials?! No, every kid should have more than the essentials. It is the duty as the quasi-aunt/fairy godmother to spoil the children!

That's when they were joined by JJ and Blake.

"Hey girls," Maeve greeted them.

"This one doesn't want a baby shower…or presents…" Garcia said, pointing to Maeve.

The others looked from her to Maeve as if Maeve was an alien.

"We have what we need…what else is there?" Maeve asked.

"Let's see…toys, stuffed animals, cute decorations, blankets, unnecessary fluffy things, mobiles and wall decals and those glow in the dark stars on the nursery ceiling!"

"But…won't that scare them?" Maeve asked.

"Not if we put the stars up before they come home…Come on Maeve, it'll be great."

"Garcia…"

"Girl…after two years you should know by now…never…ever…hang out with me if you want to avoid a shopping spree…" She said, tugging Maeve by the arm.

"Trust me Maeve, you're not going to stop her, the last time I let her go shopping alone she came back with twelve huge bags full of stuff, and it was all for Henry… at least by coming with you can attempt to rein her in." JJ replied.

"Ok…let's go…" Maeve finally conceded.

Within hours they had enough stuff to literally cover the nursery in decorations and stuffed animals, all of it matching the lavender, green, and blue color scheme that she and Spencer had agreed upon months earlier.

Spencer, proving to be a very overprotective father, had stapled three layers of fluffy fleece fabric, two feet up the walls of the nursery as soon as it was painted. Then he had covered the linoleum floor with the plushiest area rugs he could find. The same day he did this, Morgan came over and helped him finally get the furniture out of the boxes and assemble it.

As he screwed a wheel onto one of the legs on the boy's crib, Morgan watched Reid struggle to do the same to the girl's crib.

"Boy…" He said, "You really are bad with tools aren't you Reid?"

"I managed to work the staple gun just fine…" he said, with a hint of pride in his voice, shooting a leading glance at the fabric covered portion of the wall.

"Looks like you went a little trigger happy to me… and what are the blankets there for anyway?" Morgan asked.

"For when the start to crawl, I don't want them to ram into a hard wall before they develop hand-eye and motor coordination!" He exclaimed as if it should be obvious.

"Reid they're not even born yet…"

"Yeah but there's only a month and a half left…and that's assuming the full forty weeks… 61% are born at thirty-seven weeks or less, I want to have everything ready!" He told him. His eyes flashed with fear for a few seconds, a fear Morgan had hardly ever seen in his extremely intelligent friend before… the fear of incompetence, of mediocrity, the fear of not being good enough.

He hadn't seen this coming at all but when Morgan thought about it, it did make sense. Reid had, after all, been abandoned by his own father… and it occurred to Morgan that he might be under the impression that the lack of an example from his own childhood, doomed him to be a horrible parent as an unusual reunion over six years earlier had made it clear he considered his own dad to be.

"Reid, what's really going on…?" He asked, Morgan wasn't sure if he would answer or just brush away the question, but it was worth asking.

Reid sighed heavily and then he said: "Sometimes…sometimes I'm not sure if I'm ready for this…"

"Reid…out of all the guys I know who don't have kids yet… I'd say you're the best future dad of the lot… I mean come on man, you're great with Henry… Kid practically worships you… which is probably why he's been you for Halloween the last three years in a row! You'll do great…"

"Thanks Morgan…"

"Dude sometimes you need a good reality check…"


	10. Chapter 10: Nana Penny

On an unusually cold summer's night a little over two weeks later, Reid awoke after midnight to what sounded like someone pounding on their front door and peanut scratching at the inside of the door and barking her head off. He looked over, Maeve was still beside him, sleeping like a baby out of sheer exhaustion above all else. He thought about waking her but decided against it. She and the babies did not need the extra stress, particularly considering that by now, most burglars would have probably broken in through the back door or kitchen window… not have stood out there waiting for him to let them in.

He sat up, and as quietly as he could, got his sidearm out of the nightstand drawer on his right hand side, then took the land-line phone off the top and dialed the nine and the first one. The he got up and proceeded cautiously down the stairs as if he were clearing an unsub's location.

There was Peanut… the little roasted-ginger colored dog was still only half her adult size and had yet to grow into her paws… she was still barking her head off… over the past eight months since she had come into their house, he and Maeve had been training her as a guard dog…but as of yet she wasn't much more than a furry alarm system.

He gently scooted her back out of the way with his foot so that he could see who it was through the peephole. When he did he was shocked, standing there on the front stoop in the rain… was his eighty-six year-old grandmother… Nana Penny.

He had known that she was coming, but he hadn't expected her for at least another week…or until a more reasonable hour… the entire east coast was essentially in a monsoon…had she driven all the way down from New York in this _this, _in the dark?

He swung the door open and let her in. Nana Penny might be in her mid-eighties but she didn't look or act a day over sixty…she never had and he was starting to think she never would. Even now, she continuously dyed her hair the auburn that it had been, and moved as agile as a teenager.

She carried her bag inside and flung it and her coat onto the armchair in the living room before he had a chance to take either one. Then she turned around and hugged him, he stood there stunned for a few seconds and then hugged her back.

"Nana what are you doing here? I thought you weren't coming until at least next week… you do know that the twins aren't due for another three and a half weeks right?"

"Yes, but 61% of all twins are born at least three weeks early…surely you know that by now…"

"Well yeah but… how do you know that…?"

"Are you forgetting that Paul and Joseph are twins? Your cousins? Those statistics haven't changed much in the last thirty years." She told him. "And I will not miss the birth of my first great-grandchildren…"

"Ok… it's after midnight…wouldn't it have been better to wait until morning?" he asked.

"It's one-thirty in the morning, yes I know… but there's less traffic on the highway after ten..."

"Ok…"

"Where's Maeve…?"

"Asleep…Just how long are you planning on staying…?"

"As long as I'm useful here… have you ever taken care of a newborn before? It's more than a full time job… just wait till they come home and you'll be glad I'm here… I stuck around after you were born you know…"

"You did?"

"Of course… and your parents were way out of their depth… speaking of which… who knows if they'll take them but I brought some of your old baby toys for the twins…and I made them their first quilts… just like I did for your mom and your aunt and uncle, then you and your cousins…"

"You did…?" Reid asked with a small reminiscent smile, fond memories of burrowing into his own at night when he was little flooding his brain.

"But of course! Why wouldn't I? I'll make larger ones when they're a bit older but the forever ones would be a bit big for a crib don't you think?"

"Yeah…"

"Um Nana… we don't actually have the other room set up… there's nothing in there but a couch…"

"That's fine… honey do you have any idea how many holding cells I slept in? With nothing at all but I concrete floor? This all pre-dates you of course… your uncle might remember though… Look the point is, as far as that couch goes… I'm sure I've slept on worse, don't worry about that…"

"If you're sure…"

"I'm sure…now I'm just gonna take my bag on upstairs and then let's both try to get some sleep…" She replied.

She reached for her bag but Spencer was already halfway up the stairs with it. Penny followed him and Peanut trailed behind.


	11. Chapter 11: It's Time Part 1

As it would turn out, Nana had great timing… Spencer was woken up again, just over two hours later. This time by Maeve.

He felt her shake him gently until he opened his eyes. It took a few minutes for his eyes to readjust to being open in the darkness of their pitch-black room.

"Spencer…Spencer wake up!" She whispered.

"I'm up…I'm awake…"

"I think it's time… the twins…they're coming now…"

"What?!" He yelled, half rolling, half falling out of bed onto the floor with the entire comforter wrapped around him.

"Now?!" He asked, shaking it off and rising to his feet.

"Yes now." She said, wincing in pain. "The contractions are only fifteen minutes apart."

"Alright, alright… where's the…? Oh here they are… Here's my go-bag, and yours…" He said, setting the two large, black, duffle bags full of clothes and whatever else they might need on the bed.

"While you were asleep, Nana got here…"

"She's here?" Maeve asked. "She drove all the way down here from Mt. Bedford through that?" She asked pointing out the window into the rain outside.

"Yes… arriving at one-thirty AM I light add… She's a force of nature…and without that force of nature, at least two, soon to be three generations of this family, starting with my mom…wouldn't exist and we wouldn't be doing this right now…"

"Nana! It's happening, we're going now!" He said.

Before he even finished, she appeared as a shadow in the doorway.

"Well what are we sitting around here waiting for? Come on, I'll drive and we'll take the van…"

"You brought the van? Grandpa's van? The one that's older than me?"

"Old Reliable… that thing got me through the freak October snowstorm of '74… in the middle of which, your cousin was born…"

"Ok, fine… the van it is…." He conceded, helping Maeve to her feet.

Then the threesome headed for the car. The drive to the hospital was long. Spencer was starting to wonder if they would ever see the entrance through the dark early morning and pouring rain, and seeing the pain on Maeve's face only made him more anxious. He put out his hand for her to grab and she squeezed it so tight he was sure she was going to break it.

Then finally they saw the hospital's brightly lit entrance sign… they were almost there.

On the way to the delivery room, Spencer thought he would pass out and he didn't look like he was very far from doing exactly that.

But he didn't.

Over the next ten hours, Maeve felt her children get closer and closer to joining the outside world for the first time. She kept picturing their faces and it made her pain easier to stand… or so she thought…this idea was gone when she heard Spencer's fingers crack and heard him hiss in pain, trying not to cry out in front of her.

Finally at one forty-five in the afternoon, a tiny little girl, with a soaked, but relatively full head of brown hair and jade-green eyes came, screaming into the world.

Spencer tentatively cut his daughter's umbilical cord and watched sheepishly, desperate to hold her, as she was carried away by a nurse to be dried, weighed, and measured…

Still, what had already been the longest ten hours of their lives, was not over yet… the little girl still had to be followed by her twin brother.


	12. Chapter 12: It's Time Part 2

By this time, the entire BAU team was in the waiting room.

"Oh my God! This is SO exciting!" Garcia squealed. She was pacing up and down the length of the waiting room.

"Garcia would you calm down?" Morgan yelled.

"What do you think is taking so long?" Garcia asked.

"It took me fifteen hours to give birth to Henry, and that was just one baby…" JJ pointed out. "And Maeve is carrying twins…"

"Well yeah but it's been ten hours already and so far there's no news at all!"

"No news can be good news…"

"What if it's not? What if something's going wrong in there?"

"Babygirl…isn't Reid supposed to be the one freaking out?"

"Oh he probably is…but I'm freaking out too!"

Another eight hours later, the second baby, the boy… was finally born, he was noticeably bigger than his sister but not by much. They were both tiny… the girl was just fourteen inches long and four pounds, four ounces in weight, her brother was fifteen inches long and four and a half pounds. But this, considering that they were twins and born roughly three and a half weeks early, was not unusual and they were completely healthy otherwise.

Maeve was completely exhausted, strung out both emotionally and physically…and yet she couldn't be happier…

"I didn't hurt you did I?" she asked, turning her head to look up at Spencer.

"No…"

"Are you sure…?"

"Well it hurt when it happened but…not anymore…so you probably didn't break anything…"

"Good…I heard something crack and I was afraid I broke your hand…"

"That was all my knuckles popping at once…"

Finally, the little girl was brought back and given to her father, while Maeve fed her son…

He couldn't believe how tiny she was, how…adorable…she was so small, and helpless, and vulnerable, and yet already full of life. There was an indescribable spark in those green eyes that were so like her mother's. He just wanted to stay there, holding her forever…

Nana Penny, who had been in the room filming the whole thing was now busy taking pictures of the happy little family.

Maeve looked up at Spencer holding their, as of yet, unnamed daughter and smiled exhaustedly.

"Oh yeah…you are definitely Daddy's little girl aren't you?" she asked the tiny baby.

The newborn cooed innocently in her father's arms as he held her close against his body for warmth.

At this, Nana put the camera down and her smile widened. "Honey you have no idea… his mom had my late husband of puppet strings, all she ever had to do was look at him the right way and anything she wanted was hers… because all that stuff about little girls having their daddies wrapped around their little fingers…absolutely true…and it starts right now…" she said.

"I guess…" Maeve agreed

"What are you going to name them?" Nana asked.

"Well… her name is Evina Dianna Reid," Maeve said, nodding up at her daughter, "And this little guy…" she continued, lifting her son a few inches off of her lap, "Is Conan Doyle Reid… I wanted to name him Spencer Jr… but he wouldn't let me…"

"We're not naming him after me… I don't deserve it…" Spencer said.

"Since when?!" both women asked in unison.

"Since forever…" he answered.

"Don't be ridiculous."


	13. Chapter 13: Homecoming

Over the next two days, Reid and Maeve, as well as several members of the team, mostly Garcia, were near constant fixtures in the hospital nursery. Currently, Garcia and Reid were arguing over whether or not their teddy bears should be in the incubators with them.

"Come on Reid…let them have their bears…"

"Right now they're not strong enough nor do they have the awareness of their surroundings to avoid suffocation. It's not safe, I'm not going to leave something in there with them that they might accidently smother themselves with…" He said firmly, he could just imagine it…paternal failure before his children even saw their own home…that had to be some kind of record, one he wasn't going to break, not as long as he could avoid any such risk. Even if that risk came from gifts given to them by their well-meaning godmother.

The twins and Maeve were coming home in just a few hours, everything was ready… the nursery was clean and decorated, the rest of the house was a safe place now and the kitchen was stocked with sterilized baby bottles ready to be filled. Spencer had come home just long enough to move the bassinettes into the master bedroom, because this is where the twins would sleep for at least the first six months… he had the baby gates set up to keep Peanut out of their room and the nursery… there were baby monitors taped to the wall in every room and in both bassinets and both cribs…

He carried the infant car seats out to the garage and fitted them to the back seat of his 1965 Volvo… without these the hospital wouldn't release the twins… which is why it bothered him that he hadn't done thing part a long time ago. Once he was confident that the car seats were secure, he drove back to the hospital.

It was a warm summer afternoon when they brought the twins out to the waiting car. He felt Evina shut her eyes tightly and bury her face in his shoulder in response to her first glimpse of the outdoor summer sun. He set her down gently in the infant car seat and strapped her securely in, then he did the same with her brother before opening the passenger side for Maeve. Once everyone else was safely inside the car, Reid got in the driver's seat and drove home.

Nana, who had gone ahead of them, was taking Peanut for a walk so that they had a good half hour home together as a family without having to wonder how they were going to introduce their children to their ten-month old puppy…

"Well here we are… we're home…"

They took the twins upstairs to the nursery

"This…is your room…but you two don't sleep in here yet… you get to sleep in the other room with mommy and daddy…" Spencer told them, as if the three day old infants could understand.

There were a few additions to the nursery, there was a gift from Morgan in the form of a finished, child-proofed shelving unit that was painted lavender and green and had the phrase "My First Book Shelf" across the top in rainbow bubble letters. There was also a magnetic bulletin board with magnets big enough that there was no way the twins could swallow them at this stage. Currently the words "Welcome Home" were written in JJ's elegant handwriting in pink dry erase marker. On Morgan's bookshelf, in addition to baby and toddler books that Jack and Henry had long outgrown, sat Blake's gift… a picture book containing the alphabets of various world languages. Rossi had left a small, green stereo and an mp3 player containing Italian classical music.

They were all there… each and every member of his team had brought something, something that didn't just reflect their shared family-like bond, and their welcoming the twins into that bond… but each gift reflected a piece of the person who had given it. To Reid and Maeve, it was all so perfect…


End file.
